


The Rise and Fall

by ChroChro



Series: In which everyone dies, the trilogy [1]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Everyone dies BUT NOT REALLY, Gen, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, basically an 8 chapter prologue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5872966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChroChro/pseuds/ChroChro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been several days now, a week? She wasn’t sure as her mind was fuzzed with exhaustion; the sleepless nights were starting to get to her, she was seeing things. She glared at one of the manifestations of her mind, the empty eyes of the creature blankly stared back.</p><p>Next Update: So a Nerd, a Bird, and a Priest Walk into a Bar...</p><p>Constructive criticism is always welcomed!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rise and Fall

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy, a fanfic that starts with Willow? That's a first surprisingly enough. The rating/tags will make more sense in the future

“Say pal, you don’t look so good.” The voice paused for a second, but continued once it saw the woman stir slightly, “You better find something to eat before night comes.” The voice disappeared in a puff of smoke. The stench of smoke fully woke the woman; she sat up, with a pounding headache but fine otherwise. Willow looked around, searching for a recognizable landmark to go by. It looked to be a standard forest populated mostly by birch trees, birds, rabbits, and the like; except for a skeleton that was stuck face-first in the mud.

Out of a morbid curiosity she walked up to it, lightly tapping its foot with her own, yep definitely dead. She circled around it finding a straw hat; she picked it up and inspected it, other than a hole on one end of the visor it was in perfect condition. The second she put it on rain started to pour down like a flood, great. Willow ran into the canopy of the forest, luckily it was thick enough to offset most of the rain, which is to say she still got soaked within a few minutes.

“Guh, dumb hat giving me bad luck.” She mumbled under her breath sticking out her tongue. After standing under a tree for about 15 minutes she grumbled, and rung out the hat before setting out and trying to find materials for a fire or at least a shelter.

Walking out from under her deciduous canopy she tried to ignore the rain with increasing difficulty, but enough to get something done. That something being stripping some saplings of their branches and grass tufts of well, grass. During her small kindling scavenge however, the rain decided to not be so rude as to kindly get outta dodge; only to reveal about an hour of pure daylight before twilight hours, shit.

Knowing that it was probably best to build a proper camp-fire than to start a forest fire and accidentally burning everything flammable in one go. Crafting a crude ax from a stick and nearby flint she went to work on the biggest tree nearby, what felt like a thousand hacks later the tree fell, some of nuts rolling out from the leafy green. chopping it into smaller logs was a bit easier but was still tedious work. After moving the logs up against a tree to help shield it from likely imminent rain she picked up the nuts; a bit large, filling her hand and a bit prickly, but nothing too bothersome. She eyed it curiously wondering the edibility of the nut, did birches even bear nuts? Just shrugging it off as a birch species left undocumented, she cracked it open with her axe to see if it would give her more clues. She definitely wasn’t a botanist but could tell that this was just a giant nut rather than a hard fruit or seed like a coconut. She pocketed the cracked nut as it seemed to be a decent food or at least something that wouldn’t kill her. 

Willow moved onto other similarly sized birches, cutting it down, segmenting it, grab the loot, rinse and repeat. It continued for another two hours or so before it became so dark that she could barely see a few feet infront of her. Stumbling on a stump on her way back she felt for her lighter in her chest pocket, thank god it was still there. She lit it, a small flame sparking making the path more visible. Willow took the travel time as a point to observe her surroundings a bit.

A light sprinkle began again, leaving the soft clicks and hisses as an echo, was it cicadas? She couldn’t quite tell as cicadas generally only showed up during summer, but then again this could just be an unnaturally wet summer; or it’s actually spring and those aren’t cicadas. A shiver ran down her spine as her imagination started running wild. Playing it safe Willow picked up the pace to the small stockpile.

Tossing another log onto the fire it licked higher towards the tree tops, daring to swallow it and the forest whole. Willow gazed into the heart of the fire a giddy expression taking over her features. She was dragged out of her hypnotic state by a low growl of her stomach, waiting to be filled. Willow checked all her pockets for some scraps of food ‘You had one job Willow, one job’ nearly accepting a supperless night she remembered the birchnuts. She leaned over to the small pile of nuts grabbing three and settled back down by the fire. Deciding that it would likely be safer to roast it, also the fact that licking the inside leaving a gross taste in her mouth would keep her from trying to eat it raw again.

Taking a few minutes to bake the nut until it’s nearly smoking she moves onto cooking the next one while shoving the first one in her mouth. She repeated the process until the three had already been stuffed down her throat. It wasn’t a very filling meal, but it was enough, the added comfort of being freshly cooked was merely a bonus.

 

It’s been several days now, a week? She wasn’t sure as her mind was fuzzed with exhaustion; the sleepless nights were starting to get to her, she was seeing things. She glared at one of the manifestations of her mind, the empty eyes of the creature blankly stared back. The Crawling Horror she decided she would call it; a quite literal name for it, a second more passed before it vanished in thin air. She grumbled before continuing on to the task at hand.

Willow’s makeshift pickaxe shattered in unison with one of the many boulders in the biome. exhausted she sat on the ground, pulling a small handful of berries from a pocket. Her snack break was interrupted by another manifestation of nightmare fuel, but this one looked harmless; almost friendly in a very disturbing way. It inched closer, similar to a house pet begging for food, she reached out her hand curiosity nagging at her; when else would she ever find out if it was a corporeal creature or not? But the instant her hand lowered to give the head a small pat it phased through; she jerked her hand back to see it stained in an almost-black shadowy goo. With wide eyes she scoped for the manifestation, but it disappeared.

She started shaking now, that couldn’t be real could it? it was incorporeal like a hallucination, but she felt it; pure nightmares screaming against her skin, she didn’t want to feel that ever again. Without thinking she threw a small handful of grass onto the rocky surface and brought it to living embers with her trusty lighter. Willow sat in place drawing her knees up to her chest, again her eyes wide but now out of a calm awe rather than a fear. In a few minutes the small fire died, leaving ashes behind. 

Feeling a bit calmed, not enough to rid herself of the shadows in her peripheral vision, but enough to mellow her breathing and prevent a total meltdown. Willow stood, tapping her foot to wake it. She crafted another pickaxe and went on to a nearby goldrock, as nitre seemed to have no use for her at the moment. She got a few chinks into the rock before a bird’s noise distracted her; curiosity making her pause until a shadow loomed over her. 

Said shadow was staring into her soul with an anger unmet by any other; but on the other hand Willow would have certainly had a laugh given the bird’s singular, comically large eye and the rest of the body only doing more to disproportion the creature. The creature gave an ear-splitting shriek before diving in attack. She staggered backwards last second, the beak a few mere inches from drilling through her skull.

The creature even more enraged; Willow kited it around the rock hoping to lose it. Ducking behind another rock a few feet away she surveyed the area for any other dangers, her eyes locking onto a bundle of grass and twigs next to the rock she had been chipping at, the blue and white spotted egg sticking out like a sore thumb. On one hand it would be wonderful to get the protein as she had been living off of rufage the past several days, but on the other hand the creature was still very much a threat. Following an internal debate she searched her pockets for a distraction. Coming up with some nitre in its debatable usefulness she readied to throw it.

The creature shrieked with the sound of the rock hitting a larger boulder. Willow dashed over and removed the large egg from the nest; it was surprisingly light for its size. She attempted to shove it in her pack, only to have it full to the brim, she would have groaned loudly but given the situation it wasn’t exactly the ideal. Hearing an even louder cry, an even angrier one, she opted to sling the pack back on and just run for dear life.

However, before Willow could get moving the creature was already diving for a peck; being without enough time she was struck, leaving a long gash in her side. Rolling over with a wince she held the egg in front of herself, making the creature conflicted and leaving it scuffling the ground making mad- almost pouty chirrups. Willow started scooting backwards into a more upwards position, the creature followed chirrups growing in volume. Finally she inched into a standing position, and grabbed the closest weaponlike object from her pack; it was a near broken axe far from being useful for the task at hand, but the cycloptic abomination wouldn’t know that key factor. When the creature stepped forward; far too close for comfort, Willow brought the blade up to the egg, a threat understood even to the birdlike creature. With the bird frozen in place she backed a good few feet before running in the direction of her base.

Even with the bird chasing after her she pressed on, quickly reaching the nearby forest. Weaving through the drooping pines the pursuing footfalls soon left accepting the loss. With a small bit of down time Willow slowed her pace, even taking liberty in lighting a few patches of trees aflame. Left in a much better mood she walked through the burnt remains of the woods gathering bits of twigs and grass that had miraculously survived.

 

A good two hours later Willow returned to a base intact, well if a small pile of random trinkets in a clearing could be counted as a base. Slipping the pack off with an ‘oof’ she popped the kinks in her back. Intending to first build a fire pit with the haul of rocks she laid the egg onto some grass nearby the small stockpile. pulling a good dozen or so stones from the bag she tried to make an actual circle, but ended up being a strange cross between an oval and a square; feeling her body protest for food she felt no wrong in having an early cooking fire. heaving; admittedly more logs than was necessary to the pit, lighting and feeding it to a large size in no time. Hold on...was that egg sweating? Even though she was completely sure that eggs generally don’t do certain things like sweating, Willow moved the egg a few feet anyway. As she sat down a sharp pain in her abdomen reminded her of her still yet unattended wound. Now seems like the perfect time to check on it, wasn’t like she was going to cook or anything.

Adjusting herself to see the wound she poked the area around it lightly, leaving a dull throb. Going through a mental checklist of how to treat a wound she crossed out rubbing alcohol as being with no source of it; and the wound was, thankfully too shallow to require stitches not that she had the resources for that anyway, it seemed that all that was left was to keep clean bandages on it. But the same issue arises with getting a clean bandage. She would have to make do with the resources she had. Originally opting to use some grass for the bandage; the straw hat that had survived the past few days by a few threads, had fallen forward onto her face. An idea struck her, and in some number of minutes she had managed to tear the hat and tie it around her waist, covering the wound.

The sun hadn’t fully set until Willow had finished cooking her meal for the night, a carrot and a few handfuls of berries that would go bad in the next day or two. Bringing the egg closer to herself and the fire to protect it from possible competition, she felt it shiver in her hands before it was gradually warmed by the fire; okay now there was definitely something up with this egg. She moved it around in her hands, freezing when finding a small crack in the side of the egg, but then almost dropping it when the crack grew on its own. The egg was hatching, damn. Seeing this as a chance to learn something about the strange birds she left the egg near the fire, and patiently waited for daybreak.

 

Just a few days later Willow was squatting next to the egg in base, hoping to have the creature imprint on her. The egg had been furiously clicking against the shell for several hours now, taking up the woman’s few precious hours of pure daylight. She finally thought of some of the less, ah, positive consequences about this; first off, what the hell did these things even eat? Not even just what, but how much? Would it even stay loyal to her after hatching much less reaching maturity? She would have continued but her pessimistic thoughts were shushed by a muffled peep.

The small bird was asking for help. She was hesitant on cracking the shell, wasn’t it supposed to insure that the chick was strong enough to survive? She became panicked when the egg stopped its movement; with no other choice but to whisper words of encouragement she moved to sit on her knees, the scrapes of yesterday’s hound returning in their light throb. She grew ecstatic when the clicking returned even louder now. With just a few hard pecks the small beak broke through, the high-pitched chirps finally in clarity.

It wasn’t much longer before the small bird broke free of the shell entirely. Scared and confused by the entirely new stimuli it crawled, er, hopped into the nearest body of heat, that being Miss Willow. Startled by the bird’s movement she touched it to confirm that the bird was real; and that it had been fully developed at birth whereas most birds would take days, if not weeks to get this form. She was taken from her thoughts as the bird buried itself even further into her abdomen, hiding from the encroaching darkness.

Lighting the nightly fire she cooked some small chunks of rabbit, the newest edition still on her lap. Intending to leave some for the morning she was going to pocket it, at least until the beady, begging stare from the bird made her pause.

“Want it?” She spoke, her voice still slightly cracked and hoarse; as she offered the morsel to the bird. The bird visibly brightened and plucked the meat from her hand, barely taking time to savor it. Realizing it didn’t have more food, it looked towards Willow expectantly. 

“Sorry l’il buddy, that was the last of it…” The newborn seemed to understand her through the tone, as it lightly bowed its oversized head in slight disappointment. However, its mood was restored when the firestarter began petting it absentmindedly.

“Dr. Cuddles,” the bird looked at her in confusion  
“I think that’s what I’ll call you; Dr. Cuddles.” Dr. Cuddles pipped in excitement as the woman began chuckling at the sheer cheesiness of the pet’s name. However it wasn’t much longer before Dr. Cuddles fell asleep in her lap; the firestarter following within the hour, the crackling of flame lulling her into unconsciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction in two years so I'll be a little rusty the first few chapters, just bear with me here. I just realized that this is the longest thing I've ever written; well that happened.
> 
> (This was honestly meant to be finished a month and a half ago, don't procrastinate kids)


End file.
